On The Ropes.

Across the board.

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1. Israel launched a wave of airstrikes against Hezbollah targets in Lebanon Thursday, as the militant group’s leader said two days of debilitating attacks on its members amounted to a declaration of war. The strikes came moments before Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah began to speak about the attacks earlier this week that caused pagers and walkie-talkies carried by thousands of the group’s members to explode, killing 37 people and injuring nearly 3,000. “This criminal act is a major terrorist operation and amounts to a declaration of war,” Nasrallah said, promising retribution promising retribution but also acknowledging that the device explosions had dealt the group “a hard and severe blow.” While he spoke, a pair of sonic booms rang out across Beirut, which Lebanon’s official news agency attributed to Israeli warplanes. Tensions across the Israeli-Lebanese border have ratcheted higher, with heavier exchanges of fire and more aggressive Israeli operations. “In the new phase of the war there are significant opportunities but also significant risks,” Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said Thursday. (Source: wsj.com)

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2. After months of saying a cease-fire and a hostage-release deal was close at hand, senior U.S. officials are now privately acknowledging they don’t expect Israel and Hamas to reach an agreement before the end of President Biden’s term. The administration won’t stop its pursuit of an agreement, seeing it as the only way to end the war in Gaza and stop a rapidly escalating conflict between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah. The White House has previously said the warring parties have already agreed to “90 percent” of the deal’s text, so hope remains for a breakthrough. But a number of top-level officials in the White House, State Department, and Pentagon argue the warring parties won’t agree to the current framework. “No deal is imminent,” one of the U.S. officials said. “I’m not sure it ever gets done.” (Source: wsj.com)